On May 1, in Palo Alto, California, the American 10,000-meter record was broken—but not by the guy most people expected to do it. While all the prerace hype focused on former University of Oregon standout Galen Rupp, Chris Solinsky won in 26:59.60, smashing the previous mark by 14 seconds and becoming the first non-African runner to break 27 minutes. Not bad for his first-ever 10,000. Solinsky, a five-time NCAA champion at the University of Wisconsin, is a member of the Oregon Track Club and is coached by Jerry Schumacher. He was the runner-up in the 5000 meters at the 2009 USATF Championships, a performance that earned him a trip to the World Championships in Berlin, where he placed 12th in 13:25.87.

Editor's note: This interview was conducted the week of May 3, 2010.Watch video of the race on Flotrack.org:

RW: I was looking at your previous race results. Have you won a race as a professional?CS: Not too many, but a couple. Maybe less than half a dozen.

So how does it feel to win you first foray into the 10-K--and get an American record on top of that?Incredible. With all the hype and talk about Galen [Rupp] going after the record, that wasn't my first thought going in, to try to go and win. Well I guess I take that back, I wasn't expecting to run fast but I wanted to win. What I've done my whole career, even though it hasn't really been apparent from the results, we just try to get in the best races as possible and a lot of times I go after it and end up blowing up. And that was kind of the case this weekend. I just went after it and I knew there was a chance I could blow up, but the more times you put yourself in the position to get the win, the better off you're going to be.

I know you talked about having a side stitch in a Flotrack interview. Was that the toughest spot in the race for you?That was definitely the hardest thing I had to go through. It put a little bit of doubt in my mind, and at that point that's when we started running pretty quick, too. I had to keep telling myself, "make it one more lap and maybe it will go away." So I just kept plugging away at the laps and finally it did go away with about six laps to go. And that's kind of when I got really excited. I was feeling good the whole time but the cramp was the only thing that I was like "oh man, this can't ruin it now." And once that went away and I felt like more of the excitement was that I was going to finish and that kind of carried me to be able to finish hard.

That was something that surprised me--that you weren't sure that you were going to finish.Definitely. It was my first time running 10,000 meters on the track so I was very intimidated by the distance alone and then you throw in having somebody go after the American record--it's quite the first race to try to jump into. We knew that we were fit, but it's just a matter of battling those mental demons and making sure I felt like I had nothing to lose and just going after it. Sometimes it ends terribly and it hurts really bad, but sometimes you hit it on the right day and it turns out well.

You mentioned mental demons. You were thinking about the pace you were running, clicking off these fast laps, and you were worried about that during the race weren't you?Yeah, it's hard not to. There were people every 200 meters yelling off a split, whether it was a 200-meter split or a lap split. It was hard not to hear those. I tried not to pay attention to what lap we were on and what pace we were running, but you always heard it. It was hard to get over hearing when they started saying "63, 64" [for one lap]. It was not too long ago that if I heard 63 or 64 in a 5000 I would have been kind of intimidated. It was kind of hard to block it out, but if anything, the stitch kind of helped take my mind off of the splits.

You made a pretty big move with 900 meters to go. What was going through your head then? Were you feeling good? Did you think you could win?I didn't know that I was going to win until probably 300 meters to go. At that point, I was feeling good but in the past I've definitely made a strong move to the finish from far out and have not been able to sustain it. One of the times was actually against Galen, he ended up catching me in the final meters and just out-leaned me at the line. Those things go through your head when you go to make a move, but at the time I was feeling really good and was ready and willing to take a shot at it. At that time I didn't even know...probably like three or four laps before that I forgot about the pace and I was just psyched that I was feeling good. I never thought even making that move would give me the American record, let alone under 27. I was trying to win the race and then with 200 meters to go was kind of the first time I thought about where I was with respect to time.

What was going through your head during those last 200 meters?Just to get after it as hard as I could.

Get after the time?Yeah. I even tried to reflect back on what we've focused on in practice when it comes to doing speedwork and finishing off a race: Just hold the form and stay as loose as possible. I'm a guy who, it's frustrating to me that sometimes the harder you try, the worse you do. So I just tried to stay as relaxed as possible and step it up a notch every 100 meters and in those last 200 meters, try to do it every 50 meters.

One news outlet mentioned your trying to make moves from pretty far out and it not paying off for you all the time. Did it feel good to have it work this time?Yeah, I definitely have learned from those past experiences. Even this time, when I got on the backstretch after I made the move, I told myself to relax and step off the pedal a little bit because, in the past, usually, when I try to go all out the entire way to the finish line...I realized that's not always possible. So I made myself relax with 600 meters to go and then once I got to the bell, it was like "OK, let's see what I can do."

We know that in the last 150 meters you were trying to get under 27 minutes but what went through your head as you broke the tape?I can't believe it. I made a comment beforehand that I be anywhere from 26:55 to 28:00. The 26:55--it was only a small, small part of me... "ok, well everything has to go absolutely perfect to run under 27." I'd even written the splits down on a sheet--what 66 per quarter meant, what 65 per quarter meant. Sixty-fives is 27:05 and I remember thinking, "wow, that's impossible. So just focus on 66's and try to close." To run 26:59 was unbelievable. It was just shock going through my head. And the second thought was "I wish my wife was here."

You said that you were thinking of having your wife come but then it looked like it was going to be too expensive so you decided not to bring her out. Are you going to be bringing her to every race in the future now?I think a lot of the domestic races we'll try to and then the bigger international ones, definitely, we'll make a little bit more of an effort to get her to. Originally we really didn't even talk about it because, for us, when we first decided to do a 10K it was going to be kind of an experiment but getting closer we realized what shape we were in. Then we looked into having her come and it was just too expensive and we decided not to. In hindsight I really wished we would have just paid whatever it cost to get her there.

When did you realize what kind of shape you were in?Probably about two weeks out from the race. Workouts were going well. I could feel it was going to be a good effort, I didn't know how good because it's hard to tell. But two weeks out I was like "well this could be a good race and I'm ready to compete so maybe we should try to...It would be cool if you could come and watch and take part in the weekend."

When did you talk to your wife after the race? Did someone hand you a cell phone?I didn't actually talk to her until the next morning. My wife is very good at keeping me humble. She sent me a bunch of text messages and I really didn't get to my phone until probably a good hour or an hour and a half after the race and she was like, "I'm exhausted I'm going to bed." So I called her up the next morning. I gave her a call but I think she turned off her phone knowing that I was going to call.

What did the text messages say? Did she congratulate you? You said she's good at keeping you humble...It's funny, the first text message was along the lines of "Yay, I love you," and the last part of it was "now we can get wood floors." We were going back and forth and I told her we couldn't afford it and that was her first response "now we can get the wood floors."

Do you have to laugh at that?I definitely laughed and then I was like, "what a punk, way to steal my moment." But I knew where it was coming from and it was a joke.

Besides the prospect of wood floors, can you name one or two ways that things have changed for you since you ran 26:59?I think the biggest obvious change is that there's a lot more attention that I never received before. I tend to feel like I've always been at this level, but there's always been guys and women who've had bigger accomplishments than me and they've all been motivating me and I strive to get to that level. Being around people in our group like Shalane [Flanagan] and Matt [Tegenkamp] and Simon [Bairu] and obviously the other side of the group, like Kara [Goucher] and Galen, and Amy [Yoder Begley]...it's just great having those people around because success fosters other success. It's kind of nice having that. So I guess, yeah, the attention has been different. It's just been gaining confidence from it, I guess that's a big change too. The biggest thing I think I've taken from this is learning how to shut my mind off. I would say I did a lot of thinking during the race but compared to normal...I'm normally very cognizant of where I'm at in a race lap-wise and what pace we're on and everything and this was the first time where I was able to shut my mind off to those things and just run.

Back to the attention, you said you didn't even have to tell certain people about what happened because they already knew. What did that feel like?It's pretty incredible. People from my high school even, like people I haven't talked to in years, I've been getting text message or calls from them saying that they've heard about it. My dad said that customers are coming in--he works at an agriculture warehouse company and he's a salesman there--and people recognize his last name and bring me up to him. It's strange...it's definitely cool. It's very humbling to be recognized by the average person. Usually it's the running community, you're not too surprised to be recognized by but when it's outside the running community then it makes you realize the accomplishment a little bit more.

And you've also been getting attention from your fellow professional athletes.It's been pretty incredible. Meb [Keflezighi, the former 10,000-meter record-holder] called and texted and by the time I got back to him I think it was Monday night. And then a guy that I've competed against and respect a lot is Bernard Lagat, he left a voicemail on my phone and Bob Kennedy texted me a couple times saying how good of an accomplishment it was.

Did you have these people's phone numbers before?I think they might have talked to people who could track it down. It's pretty cool to have people that you looked up to all through high school and college and even being a postcollegiate, looking up to their accomplishments and the people that they are and they're trying to track you down. Humbling is the best word to describe it.

How do you feel about people saying that you're the first American under 27 minutes and the first non-African?It's pretty cool. The way I've always approached it is that you're just competing against somebody else who's just that much better. Even in the NCAA, I heard a lot of people criticize the fact that there were a lot of Kenyan athletes and foreign athletes altogether kind of stealing the glory from the Americans. But I actually thought that was better for the sport because it elevated our game. I definitely wouldn't have trained as hard if it weren't for the foreign athletes coming in and kicking our butt. I always think it's an even playing ground no matter where you're from or what your background is.

You said 26:59 blows you away, and I don't mean to diminish what you've just accomplished, but do you ever think, "Oh my god, Kenenisa Bekele has run 26:17." Does it scare you how much faster the world record is than what you just did?I wouldn't say it scares me. It motivates me to keep pushing hard. This may sound bad but I've already kind of moved past the race, because for us it was definitely not the focus for the year. Jerry [Schumacher, his coach] and I already talked and he's actually ticked about how the race went. He's like "If you would have spread that 1:56 [last 800 meters] out over the last 6 laps instead of the last two, we could be looking at a 26:45 not a 26:59." So he's already put everything in perspective and brought me back down to earth. And I think that's reasonable. I'm not saying I'm going to go set up a race to try to do it, but hopefully we get the opportunity to be in a race that fast down the road and try to be competitive.

Well it was your first 10,000 so you can't be knocked for trying to hang back a little bit.Well I definitely don't think the time is going to last. Whether it's me who breaks it or Dathan [Ritzenhein] or Galen...

You don't think it's going to last how long? Through the summer?It may last this year because there's not too many more big 10Ks, but I say give it five years and it will definitely be broken. There's a number of individuals who can take a crack at it and lower it significantly. I just hope to be one of the people who is able to lower it.

So who are these individuals?Matt Tegenkamp when he gets up to the 10,000. If Bernard Lagat ever wants to do it, he's got the talent. You look at somebody like Abdi [Abdirahman] who could come back to the track and definitely do it, same with Meb. He still thinks his best running is ahead of him and I believe that. And if someone like Ryan Hall decides to do some speedwork and jump back on the track, he's definitely got the talent to do it. I'm sure there's plenty of guys I'm leaving out, and there's a lot of young guys coming up who have the talent to take a crack at it.

I was surprised to learn that you've been doing weeks over 100 miles. You said in the Flotrack interview that you're not a 10K guy, just a 5K guy who's dabbling, but you sound like a marathon guy. Is everyone in your group doing that sort of volume or is it only you because you consider yourself a strength runner?There's lots of guys that are doing high mileage, but it's not for everyone. I'm definitely a durable guy. We joked last year even that Simon and Tim [Nelson], they're 10,000-meter runners on their way to moving up to the marathon, and I was doing just as much if more miles than them certain weeks and they're like "you're a 5K guy, you shouldn't even be doing this." But I'm a very strength-oriented runner and I always have been and I probably always will be. Matt said to me on a run today, "just think of it, you've done a few 120-mile weeks, where are you going to go from here? How much higher do you think you can go?" I don't know. Obviously I've got to get to a point where 120 miles can feel comfortable first.

You said Stanford wasn't the target race for this season. You're going to Oslo to run a 5000 [at the Bislett Games on June 4, Solinsky ran 12:56.66. Bernard Lagat set a new American record in 12:54.12], you're running the 1500 at Nationals, and then the 5000 at the Prefontaine Classic on July 3. You said you don't race to chase times, you just want to win, but yet you've also said that you do want to chase the American record at Prefontaine in the 5K.That kind of got mis...

OK that got mis-quoted? You said you want to go sub-13 on American soil, and is it perhaps that you think it might take an American record to win that race?Yes. I think, obviously, anything can happen on the day. But, the time goals that I have are just kind of like in the back of my head. When we step to the line it's like "OK, what do we need to do to be in the front of this race when it's over. And a lot of times, especially if someone like Bekele is in the 5000 at Prefontaine like we've heard he is, obviously it could be a 13-oh race but it has the potential to be a sub-13 race and, if that's the case, I want to put myself in the position to be at the front, and if I'm at the front, then hopefully it's a fast race.

Just to be super clear, you're going to win but you think it could be fast and if it's fast, you do have in the back of your head the American record.Correct. We just want to get ourselves in the fitness to be able to run...we want to be fit enough to be able to run what the American record is. And so we're doing whatever we can to be that fit. But obviously the race is dictated every which way and if we don't get the American record that day, it's not like we're going to be ticked off. If we finish a few steps behind Bekele, we're not going to be ticked off because it's 13:10. But if everything goes perfectly, you know how I said this weekend "26:55 or 28:00," and we hope we're fit enough to run the American record or at least sub-13.

I'm noticing that you're saying "we" a lot. Are you referring to you and your coach or you and your teammates? It sounds like this is very much a team mentality.I would say we're a pretty close-knit bunch of guys, even throw Shalane in there. The stuff we do we kind of try to do together. Matt has already proven that he's a sub-13 guy [he ran 12:58.56 in September 2009] and Evan [Jager] is a young guy who definitely has the ability to get under 13. So when I say "we" it's encompassing all the athletes and Jerry as well.

I know people have been talking about this a lot but you look like you could probably beat up Dathan and Galen with your pinky. The IAAF called you "barrel-chested"...I don't know if you saw that. But you do look leaner than you have in recent years. Have you made any changes to your diet? I know you talked about your wife's cooking and core work.[Laughs] Yeah I heard about it and then I looked for it. I'm actually the same weight I was the last two...well I can't say the last two years. In 2008 I was definitely heavy. But since then I've been right around the same weight and that's mid-160s. Just over the last two years, I've just lost that little excess...fat, I guess you can call it fat. It was just excess body tissue and it's turned to muscle instead. That's one of the biggest changes, proportioning the weight differently and obviously my wife's cooking has a lot to do with it because she really is into eating healthy and I kind of benefit from that. And the core strengthening helped proportion the muscle in the right places.

Have you always been relatively bigger than your competitors even back to high school or is this a new thing since you've hit the international circuit?I've definitely been bigger my whole career. In high school, my dad had to keep calming me down because I'd get worked up because I'd catch wind of people saying that I was too big to do anything and that I was only good because I hit puberty before everyone else.

What did your dad tell you to do?He always had a funny quote...

The bumblebee one?The bumblebee one, yeah. "No one told the bumblebee he shouldn't technically be able to fly."

Did you brush that off at first and not believe him or did you always take that to heart?Yeah, at first I was definitely like, "OK, whatever Dad, that sounds stupid." But once I decided to become persistent about the sport of running, I kind of embraced that and just ignored what everyone said because I knew that I could be good and my support system knew that I could be good so we just kind of went about our business and stopped worrying about what other people were saying.

Does it bother you when you hear things like the IAAF calling you barrel-chested, or do you think, "I don't care, I just broke 27 minutes"?I probably would have cared a bunch of years ago, but I've gotten so used to people commenting on my size that I just brush it off and I think it's funny now. I kind of embrace it. Last night Simon, Shalane, and I did an appearance at FitRight Northwest in Portland, Oregon, and Shalane and I both wrote the same thing: "Dream Big." She yelled me for copying her because she's been doing it for longer so I tried to think of something else and one of the things that was suggested was "big is in." I signed a couple of autographs that way...I might just embrace it but we'll see, I haven't decided yet. It's got a good ring to it.

I read that, after the race, one of your teammates joked that you had set a "fatty world record." Who said that?That was Simon. Simon is probably the person who rides me the most about being big. Even in the last year he's like "I'm running out of material, you're starting to lose weight." I was like "I don't care, you can keep saying it." We're a big bunch of jokesters on our team. We definitely give each other a really hard time all the time and it's a good chemistry because it keeps everybody level-headed.

What did you do after the race to celebrate? Did you eat a giant steak and have some adult beverages?Actually it was pretty uneventful. Once we got everything together...I think we did quite a few interviews after the race and cooled down finally. We went to Pizza My Heart and I only had two, maybe three slices of pizza, and some soda and water and that was it because we had to go back to the hotel and get drug tested and once that was all over we probably got to bed around 3. 3:30. Jerry had us get up at 7:30 to go run the next run, so pretty uneventful.

What kind of pizza did you have?I had a cheese and one that had everything on it basically. Like a supreme or deluxe or something.

This is going to sound like a ridiculous question but do you drink diet soda or regular soda?I'm actually a huge Sprite junkie so I have a can of it every night. And Amy has to yell at me sometimes because I want two and she's like "stop, that's too much!" There are days when I want two cans of soda and she only lets me have one Sprite.

You've had so much promise since you were a teenager, after winning the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships in 2002, and then winning multiple NCAA titles at Wisconsin, but did you ever get the sense that people thought you hadn't lived up to your potential as a professional because you hadn't had a breakthrough race yet?I guess maybe people thought I wasn't living up to my potential, I think more than anything, it seemed like every time I accomplished something, people found a reason why it was a soft accomplishment or why I was going to burn out. That's just the feeling I had. There probably were people out there who felt I didn't live up to my potential, but I think a lot of other people were like, "well that's what we expected."

Does the American record feel like redemption?Definitely. There have been a lot of races in my career where I've been expected to do certain things...like the Olympic Trials in 2008. I thought and I think a lot of other people thought that I was going to make the team and the fact that I didn't [he finished 5th in the 5000, two spots off the team] they might have seen that as the start of a slippery slope. It's redemption, more than anything, for all the bad races, all the bad experiences that I've had. This makes everything worth it and all the hard times kind of go away. I definitely know that there are going to be hard times ahead still. There's going to be races where I go with the pace and I blow up, but I'm never going to change the way I run and the way I compete and there are going to be consequences that come with it sometimes but there's also going to be a race every once in a while like this one.

You're from the same town [Stevens Point, Wisconsin] as Suzy Favor Hamilton. Have you met her?Yeah, quite a few times. The first time was Foot Locker my junior year. Since then we've kept in contact.

Is that weirdly competitive, like "I want to be bigger than Suzy Favor Hamilton"? Or did you feel a kinship that someone from your town had become so successful?A little bit of both. It was definitely nice knowing that it is possible. When I was in high school, there was a life-size portrait of her in our field house. So you had to look at that every day. And Curt Clausen, a three-time Olympian in race-walking, he had a life-size portrait, too. People would make fun of me and they're like "you're going to be up there someday," and I would always doubt it. And actually by the end of my senior year, they put one up of me and I was like, "I don't deserve that yet. I haven't done anything close to what they've done." I feel like I've earned my keep now.

In one interview, you said that your teammates are like the characters on the HBO show "Entourage." You compared Matt to Vince and said you'd be the Johnny Drama character, Vince's has-been older brother. I may be reading way too deeply into this, but do you feel like you've been living in Teg's shadow?For a long time I did. There were times when I was definitely upset about it but more than anything, having Matt as a training partner and as a friend, and having him accomplish as much as he has is motivating more than it's embittering. There's definitely been times when it's been like "Damn! I've had a good performance and he always finds some way to trump me." But when it comes down to it, I see what he's doing, I know if he's doing that I can do that because I'm right with him in practice. The things we do are together and I know I can get there and so it's motivating.

I read that you're thinking of doing the steeple.They saw potential that that could be my best even in terms of trying to chase an Olympic medal. I've actually been training for it since at least my junior year in college, if not my sophomore year. We train for a month or two months every year and for some reason, scrap the idea of doing a steeple every single year. But yeah, I've been doing steeple work for a good five, six years now. And this year was the perfect year to try it out and then when we decided to do the 10K, Jerry was like, "well I don't want to screw anything up with the steeplechase so we'll put that on the back burner again for now." It still could be a possibility, I have no idea what Jerry's thinking. If he still thinks that's my best shot at a medal, then I'm going to be willing to take a shot at it. The last two years of training and the next two years of training are definitely geared toward 2012 and setting ourselves up for a medal opportunity.

So have you given more thought to doing the 10K in 2012?Jerry and I have talked since the race and he's like "well maybe we need to give this more thought. We're not going to make any decisions right now but we'll see how the next couple of years progress and if it's worth our time to take a shot at it. It makes sense to me, obviously. The plan I set out for myself [2012 - 5000; 2016 - 10,000; 2020 - marathon], I set out probably two or three years ago and obviously things change and plans are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I guess we'll just see how everything plays out and if we think that's really my best chance to medal then that's the event I'm going to run. Maybe in 2020 I can be OK with being done, but until then I'm going to be firing on all cylinders trying to achieve those goals.